Sex, drugs and Rock and Roll

(Picture at left is of Dolly Madison.  Ann Carson claims that she is reputed to look just like Dolly Madison.)
Wow, the 2nd third of the two volume set of Ann Carson's narrative is fascinating. So much to delve in to (as I twitter my fingers) what shall I tackle. Hmmm. Today, I’d like to discuss class issues, spectacles and voyeurisms. While reading Carson’s bio, I kept wondering why she went out of her way to distinguish her place in class society and to attack those of lower classes. According to Ann C., the lower classes “tender mercies are barbarities” (179), and it is of this class that the dregs of society—or vagabonds—reside. She debates with the jailor about residing in Room #7 where the “lowest vagrants in prison” stay. This distinction is ironic, since we see that she is a drug addict, child abductor, assessor to jail breaks, and possibly prostitution. So the only difference between her and those in #7 is her place in society and possibly better clothes. But she embraces her position with bravado: “Well sir,” she retorts to the jailor who is amazed at her demands, “you hear it now. This room is occupied by criminals of the lowest class of society, to which no act of mine has ever yet degraded me” (223). She also announces that the Richard’s jury consists of “men from the lowest grades of society” (180), and that the governor was “of mean spirit, and low origin” (201) and his wife was “common.” She, on the other hand, is a citizen of Philadelphia, and a housekeeper, and legally entitled to the jailor’s indulgence” (223). In the margin of my book, I questioned why the stress on class position. One of my arguments about Henry Tuft’s book being so sensational is that I assumed his target audience was of the lower stratum of society, a stratum that typically favored sensational narratives. But Clarke and Carson clearly aimed their biography at the middle-class. This class would appreciate a woman who served as head of her household and head of her business. They would be more sympathetic of a woman who was abandoned by her husband and left to raise and support her children on her own (draw similarities to Burroughs and Tufts, both of whom abandoned wives—Tufts more so). And, wanting to feel superior to *something,* they would embrace a superior position over another class—and thus embrace her as one of their own. I find it real interesting that, when she does comp to mingling with lower classes (the criminal element), she argues that she wears a mask because of her public persona—“but the reason was obvious. I had been the victim of misfortune, from whom virtuous persons fly as from contagion” (47 Vol. II).

Several times she (they?—Ann and Mrs. Clarke) draws our notice to the fact that she was an object of the gaze—a spectacle, which she, ironically, is again made a spectacle through the narrative process. At other times, Ann was a voyeur of her own public persona. On the night of the murder, she remarks that “vulgar characters” and people of all classes, entered her house to “gaze, stare and comment on the horrid transaction, thus insulting the mourning orphans, who were weeping for a father” (173). People were constantly “eager to catch a glimpse of the heroine who had intimidated a commander-in-chief” (28 Vol. II); gentlemen would crowd at her door “to see the heroine that had thus intimidated their puissant governor (203), and even the governor’s wife couldn’t resist a peep (215). Men constantly wanted to be introduced to her (22 Vol. II); she was a celebrity in her own rite. She argues that “I was hunted, like a hare pursued by the hounds, from respectable society” (10 Vol. II). But Ann thrived on the fame and often used voyeuristic moments to test her popularity and to see what information about her had been discovered (199). In a mail couch, she would enjoy listening to the other riders discuss her, “I of course became the subject of conversation, they not being aware that concealed beneath the large plaid cloak and black veil, was the famous heroine of the conspiracy” (26). She dined with a gentleman who declared that she must be a “very bad woman, and guilty of all she is accused of.” Ann then saucily advised him that he should buy the trial transcript, but his opinion was “simple and unimportant” (185). Ann was pursued like rock stars today are pursued by the paparazzi. And like those rock stars, Ann appears to turn to opium to cope, and again, like rock stars today, a doctor seems to be the blame for the addiction.

Works Cited:
The Memoirs of the Celebrated and Beautiful Mrs. Ann Carson, Daughter of an Officer of the U.S. Navy, and Wife of Another, Whose Life Terminated in the Philadelphia Prison. 2nd Edition. Mrs. Mary Clarke, ed. New York. 1938.